In This Moment of Disquiet, All Things Fall Apart
by arghthecat
Summary: Castiel is pregnant with Dean's child, but there's something important that Dean has to know. [No squick]


**A/N:** So this oneshot is based upon a prompt that I received where Cas is pregnant but loses the baby for an unknown reason. I hope I did it justice.

* * *

"Sam's bringing that old rocking chair from Bobby's over tomorrow. I don't even know what the hell Bobby had it for to begin with, but it'll get used here that's for sure" Dean says. Cas walks in to what can only be described as utter chaos with paint cans and tarps covering the floors, the old furniture moved into the hall to make way for the new carefully crafted baby furniture.

Cas doesn't say anything. He just watches Dean as he attempts and fails to not get pink paint splatter all over what used to be one of his favorite pair of jeans, now destined for old rags.

The moment's too perfect and if he breathes just so he knows that reality will come knocking. It doesn't stop him from reveling in the sound of Dean's voice as he hums one of the many tunes he's so fond of that Cas can never keep track of. He works seamlessly, trying to make sure that their daughter's room is the picture of perfection.

"You gonna stand there all day or do I need to force you back to the bed?" Dean asks, his back turned as he works on the wall opposite Cas.

"I just like watching you like this."

"Oh, you just like watching me in general" Dean says and turns around to flash one of his signature smirks Cas' way.

He smiles back. Can't even stop the way his lips move against his orders because Dean's smile is infectious, always had been. Cas had once made it his mission to coax at least one out of Dean everyday and sometimes was rewarded with a brilliant, blinding smile that could easily have left him breathless if he'd needed to function.

Dean's hands resume their previous work of painting their daughter's room. "I've pretty much sanded down the bed already and all I've got left is to paint the thing."

"Dean" Cas whispers but Dean must not hear his name but he continues talking.

"Sam said he'd do it as a present to the baby, but I dunno. Kinda feels weird having somebody else finish it when I put so much work into ya know?" Dean tosses the brush coated with a soft almost nude pink and pops open the white paints to refinish the baseboards that had always needed retouching but had gone neglected like much of the room that had been used for storage.

"_Dean_" Cas tries again, this time putting all of the strength he can muster into the words.

Something in his voice must trigger panic in Dean because he's on him within seconds. He grabs his face and the tears that had been stinging Cas' eyes since the drive home came spilling out unbidden.

"Babe, what's wrong? What's going on, huh? Talk to me." Dean grabs hold of Cas' face and tilts his chin up where his eyes had averted to the floor. He's scaring Dean and he isn't sure what to make of it at all. It's so unlike the Cas he knows, who though no longer the emotionless angel he'd first encountered, had never shown this kind of feeling.

Cas shakes his head, at once trying to break free of Dean's hold and silently telling him no, that he didn't want to answer him. Not then. Not just yet.

"Come on Cas, you're scaring me now." The panic had never left Dean's voice but now it was being replaced with something else, something stronger.

Cas has to tell him. He knows he has to. They can't live in an illusion. But seeing Dean so happy makes him want to keep in for a while longer because he should be able to have this, all of it. He'd never seen Dean in such a state of calm before. Before they'd settled down and found out about the baby, he'd been living in a constant state of distress. At peace, but not completely, happy, but not fulfilled. This was the last piece to the puzzle for him. "Can I just lie down? Please, I just…I want to sleep for a bit."

Dean's knee jerk reaction was to say no. Something was happening and he didn't know what. "K, but we're talking about whatever's got you like this as soon as you wake up." The command in Dean's voice was clear, albeit unintentional. He would give Cas as much time as he needed to be with himself if that's what he needed. He'd learned to do as much when hormones took hold and Cas was a different person when the sun went down.

Cas takes Dean's acquiescence to not pry any further until he's ready and crosses the hall to their bedroom and shuts the door, hoping that Dean stayed away for awhile.

* * *

"Did something happen while he was gone?" Sam says through the phone.

"I don't know Sammy. I really don't. He's been holed up in the room for the last three hours and I know he's not sleeping, but he won't talk to me." Dean runs a frustrated hand over his face and he only then registers the shaking in his hands.

"All you can do at this point is wait him out. It's probably just another one of his mood swings. Remember the time you brought home New York style cheesecake instead of the kind with the whipped cream and you nearly lost an eye?" Sam does his best not to chuckle but the memory is still fresh and funny.

Bitch.

"Thanks for bringing that up. I'll be sure to tell the next girl you bring home about your nightly bathrooms runs when you were 14. No one has to go that much Sam. No one."

Sam stutters a serious of _jerks_ and _assholes_ down the phone and Dean can practically feel the heat from his skin as a blush crawls up his neck so he counts it as a win.

"This isn't about me, Dean or what I did or didn't do over a decade ago. Seriously though, just give him some time to come around and if he doesn't by tomorrow then you can go in guns blazing."

Sam was right and he knew it. It just didn't help his worrying or stop him from wanting to crawl into bed next to Cas and make everything, whatever it was, better.

* * *

Dean had looked at him crazy the first time he'd caught Cas singing while standing near the big open window in the living room.

The sun had just risen and the birds were saying their hello's to the world when the sound of Cas' voice had reached the upstairs bedroom. Dean had woken to it and the sound had washed him in a blanket of calm that he wanted to take with him back to bed. Instead he'd gotten up and followed the distant hum until he'd found Cas standing there, slowly swaying with a hand pressed firmly to his stomach.

It was absolutely strange to hear the soft melody coming out of Cas' mouth, but he'd explained that even the lowest order of angels had the gift of song and that it had allowed him to feel connected to their daughter who seemed to move joyfully at the sound of her parent's voice.

It's because of this he knows. Or at least knows for sure.

He'd tried to deny the lurching in the core of his very being that signaled something wrong and had ignored it. It was passed off as a mere procedural occurrence of his pregnancy. There was no guidebook and no rules of what should or shouldn't happen during angel pregnancy, so it was easily overlooked as routine.

The days passed and the glimmer of grace that had come to rest so snugly against his own had started to wane. The heat that pressed upon his own energy began to struggle with the effort to shine bright.

Cas was unsure of what to do and even more unwilling to concern Dean if none was actually needed so he'd kept it to himself, willing the grace to gain strength when even he knew, ignorant as he was, that there was no recharging the fading grace of an unborn fledgling.

He'd known the truth as he drove down the nearly deserted back roads he'd taken into town. Known it as he characteristically got out of his car, one foot at a time like always, and opened the door to the place that had come to be his home where they would repaint the walls white again, the baby clothes unneeded.

But it's in this moment that he sings his daughter the same lullaby sung to all new angels in Heaven that the truth is truly acknowledged.

His hand doesn't stop in its ministrations as he carefully soothes the empty space between and in the quiet of their room he willingly lets the tears fall for Astra who wasn't meant to be.

* * *

Dean shows up at 7:30 with reinforcements.

Cas had gone to bed without dinner or drink and Dean knew that it wasn't good for the baby to go without so he'd gotten up to make all of Cas' favorites. Food always did make him carefree and talkative these days.

He sets the tray on the bedside table in favor of sneaking into the comfort of his own bed that he'd forgone to give Cas the space he seemed to need and wrapping his arms around him. He snuggles up closer-and if asked it _wasn't_ cuddling- and breathes in the scent that's always been so uniquely Cas and almost impossible to pin down to just one smell.

Cas instinctively rolls back into the touch, gripping tighter onto Dean as he slips reluctantly back into consciousness.

Dean knows that he's awake before he opens his mouth. "Slept good, babe?" he asks, but instead of an answer he gets Cas pressing in deeper to him almost as if he were trying to bury himself within Dean.

"Cas, please look at me" he pleads. It doesn't work. He knew it wouldn't honestly, but he had to try. So he opts instead for maneuvering his way to the other side of Cas before he has time to react and keeps his face firmly in place, firmly locked on Dean's.

"You've got me worried Cas, really worried. I don't know what's wrong and if I don't know I can't fix it."

"You can't fix it, Dean. Not this time."

"Of course I can't if you won't even let me try. You've got to trust me Cas. Whatever this is that's bothering you, that's got you this upset isn't something so big that we can't do together."

Cas wants that to be true because there was a time that he believed in that sentiment so fiercely that no one could ever have denounced it as anything but truth.

He knows better now.

He gathers his strength, most of it drained out in the early morning hours, and tries to make Dean understand, to make him _see._

"You know how you'd wanted me to teach you the lullaby that I sung to Astra?" he questions and waits for Dean to nod his head before continuing. It takes a few moments to steel his resolve to speak the rest of what he'd hoped would come out in a stream of words he'd never have to say in the same order again. "I don't think you'll need to learn it now."

Dean squints his eyes, but makes no show of understanding. "Why not? Figured it'd be pretty cool for the first thing I learn in Enochian to be a song."

"Your voice is lovely Dean." He pushes a hand to Dean's mouth to stop his protests. "But I can teach you something else in Enochian." His gaze doesn't falter as he says the words and he prays to his Father, wherever he may be, that he just makes Dean understand.

"Come on Cas, she'll love that song when she's born. You've been singing it to her for months."

"I know Dean, but" _please just understand_.

Dean finally rises off of the bed, a suspicious look casting a shadow across his face and if he had the wherewithal he'd kiss away the lines that dented his forehead. "But what, Cas?"

He can't keep it in any longer and prolonging it only pushes the knife in that much deeper. "She's gone Dean" he says and his breath catches on Dean's name as the tears flow freely now. His hand doesn't move from his stomach and he makes no efforts to move closer. But even in this state he realizes, _neither does Dean._

"Who's gone Cas?" He knows.

"_She's _gone" he emphasizes, breath hitching in his throat when the words come out and he imagines his daughter how he'd imagined her for the last five months. All soft downy skin, ten kissable fingers, ten perfect toes.

"No" he hears Dean say and then "_Why_?"

He can't tell him that he doesn't know even though he doesn't. Can't offer any explanation for why everything they've collected for the newest Winchester would not be needed, never be needed.

Dean tries not to cry too because something tells him that he has no right to, that he has to be there for Cas now. The tears come anyway.

He grabs hold of Cas and pulls him close, hard enough to crush him if he could and holding on for fear of losing him too.

His hand comes up to twist in the hairs at the nape of Cas's neck in an attempt to soothe him and also to give himself something else to do with his hands besides bringing them down to Cas' belly like he so desperately wants to.

He doesn't known when either of them fall back to sleep, but no other words are said before they both go under.

Dean's phone rings downstairs, Sam's phone number flashing across the screen, to tell him that he'd be coming over with the rocking chair soon.

In a few hours they won't be able to sleep it away and toss it off as a nightmare, but for now they both rest and everything else will just have to wait.

* * *

**A/N: **The title drove me crazy so I changed it. A result of 1 a.m. sleepy writing. Don't mind me.


End file.
